I want to bring an important discussion to the table today. As active contributors who work hard to enrich Google Maps, many of us have reached milestones that rival major digital influencers. Personally, as a Level 10 Local Guide, I have accumulated over 338 million views on my photos.
However, this massive impact remains almost invisible to the general public.
Currently, only we can see the view counts of the photos we post. When other users or business owners look at our contributions, they have no idea of the scale of our reach.
Why should Google Maps change this?
The Influencer Era: On platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, views and engagement are public. Showing these metrics gives creators credibility and highlights the power of their content.
Helping Local Businesses: When a business owner sees that a photo taken by a Local Guide has hundreds of thousands—or millions—of views, they will truly understand the value of our contributions. It shows them exactly how much we help their business grow and gain visibility.
Empowering the Community: Public view counts would give Local Guides the recognition we deserve. It would prove that our voluntary work of documenting the world has a massive, measurable impact on society.
My question to the community and the Google Product Team:
When will Google Maps allow the general public (and business owners) to see the view counts on the photos we contribute?
If we want Google Maps to keep thriving with high-quality, real-time contributions, the platform needs to value its top creators. Displaying our reach is the simplest way to show the world the real power of a Local Guide.
What are your thoughts on this? Would you like to see your view counts made public? Let’s discuss!
—P.S. To everyone reading this: please leave a like (kudo) on this post!
The more likes and engagement this discussion gets, the higher the chances of it catching the attention of the Google Maps and Connect product teams. Let’s make our voices heard and turn this idea into a reality!
Thank you for sharing that! It’s great to see my overall view count reaching over 330 million.
However, my post is specifically about the individual view counts on each photo, which remain hidden or not updated correctly in our personal contributions tab. For many of us, being able to track which specific photos are helping people the most is a huge part of the motivation to keep contributing high-quality content.
Showing only the grand total doesn’t give us the detailed feedback we need to see our real, day-to-day impact on the community. That is the transparency and functionality I hope the product team can bring back!
My mistake! You are absolutely right, thank you for correcting me and clarifying that.
I got mixed up with the interface differences and some of the ongoing bugs where contributors have reported not being able to see their own counts correctly. I appreciate you pointing that out and showing the correct view!
untuk tampilan desktop dari pihak 3 tidak bisa menampilkan jumlah penayangan @tony_b
saya coba cek dari deskstop sangat terlihat sempurna @Narciso69
penayangan anda sangat besar.
apalagi foto-foto anda masuk ke dalam level kota / wilayah tertentu seperti kota Chicago tersebut. saya masih penasaran bagaimana caranya agar di terima algoritma supaya masuk kesana.
I remember once testing this and the view counts in individual photos taken by others were available when you are using an iPhone and not in Android. CC @tony_b
Are you asking about the AI selecting photos for cities etc?
There is a dedicate AI selecting a few photos uploaded to a pin inside the city to also represent the city. This AI is a sucker for very saturated blue skies.
I don’t think we are supposed to add photos to cities etc but only to places that have the add photos button or link and appreciated when one of our photos get selected. It can boost your view counts.
I don’t see the guy uploaded pics to a city. Please share a specific examples / link.
Let me piggyback off of your question because I think mine is related… after the new updates. I feel like my photos and videos are not making it to the top where they’re not receiving any views at all?
Is the new algorithm different or am I doing something wrong?
I just feel like more of my photos used to get more traction and views. But it’s been disappointing lately.
@MortenCopenhagen do you happen to know? I know you’ve helped answer some questions I’ve had before
I don’t know what is going on with our photo views these days. I also see lower total photo views as usual.
It can be an issue with delays in updating the metrics. This is a known issue because it takes a lot of computer resources to do the recount. And Google tries to do it about every 2-3 days.
It could also be that now us peak vacation season. This might put extra stress on the servers. But I find that the time to get new video uploads approved is unusually quick these days.
So maybe more Googlers went on vacation too
I noticed that the views on individual new media is also unusually low. You could sign up to Local Guided Ranking to get free tracking of your Maps contributions stats. From there I know that I in average get slightly under a million views per day. Right now I’m not near that.
This is the best I can say. It probably evens out over time and when the next recount happens.
So it’s not just me. But that’s actually even more disappointing now.
I’ll tell you this: I got discouraged for a while, and stopped contributing. but oh well. Can we pressure for better changes for local guides of higher levels?
I’m doing my best on this every day. But Google Maps is a huge enterprise serving sometimes conflicting interests. The spammers many are unfortunately quite clever, so fighting their efforts almost always comes first compared to trusting high level and authentic volunteers more. And when something get fixed there are often something else that breaks. They do listen (sometimes) but there is a policy not letting the developers “waste” their time listening to and interacting with us users. They are not allowed to respond publicly to us about problems and plans for fixes.
@MortenCopenhagen I just checked mine too… it’s not all doom and gloom. I guess it takes few days to settle the reviews and the pictures. After that it starts showing if the pictures receive any traction.
